ReFocus: The Films of Amy Heckerling

Frances Smith is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex. She is the author of 'Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie' (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), which combines close textual analysis and critical theory to argue that the genre possesses a distinct narrative and aesthetic. Timothy Shary is the author of Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen (Wallflower, 2005) and Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema Since 1980 (Texas, 2014). He teaches at Eastern Florida State College.

The editors and contributors did an excellent job showing the impact and continued relevance of Clueless, Fast Times and Ridgemont High, and the Look Who’s Talking films. I was particularly stuck by the evaluation of the language and words used in her films, as well as the subtle ways that Heckerling was able to place women and women’s issues into the films in a way that was not isolating and did not result in her films being labelled as "chick flicks".'

• AcknowledgementsFilm and Television Work by Amy HeckerlingChapter 1: Introduction, Frances Smith and Timothy SharyI: Heckerling in Teen Film and TelevisionChapter 2: Cher and Dionne BFFs: Female Friendship, Genre, and Medium Specificity in the Film and Television Versions of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, Susan BerridgeChapter 3: Fast Times with Clueless Losers: Lessons on Sex and Gender in Amy Heckerling’s Teen Films, Zachary FinchChapter 4: “As If a Girl’s Reach Should Exceed Her Grasp”: Gendering Genericity and Spectatorial Address in the Work of Amy Heckerling, Mary HarrodII: Ingenuity and Irony in the Heckerling LexiconChapter 5: Consumerism and the Languages of Class: American Teenagers View Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, Andrea Press and Ellen RosenmanChapter 6: “An increasingly valid form of expression”: Teen-speak and Community Identity in the Work of Amy Heckerling, Lisa RichardsIII: Femininity, Ageing, and PostfeminismChapter 7: Look Who’s Doing the Caring: Shared Parenting, Subjectivity, and Gender Roles in Heckerling’s Look Who’s Talking Films, Claire JenkinsChapter 8: Amy Heckerling’s Place in Hollywood: Issues of Aging and Sisterhood in I Could Never Be Your Woman and Vamps, Betty KaklamanidouChapter 9: “Staying Young is Getting Old”: Youth and Immortality in Vamps, Murray LeederIV: Reflections on the Heckerling OeuvreChapter 10: “But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl”: The Teenage Female Empowerment Payoff in Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, Stefania Marghitu and Lindsey AlexanderChapter 11: Clueless Times at the Ferris Bueller Club: A Critical Analysis of the Directorial Works of Amy Heckerling and John Hughes, Kimberly M. MillerChapter 12: Way Hilarious: Amy Heckerling as a Female Comedy Director, Writer, and Producer, Lesley SpeedAppendix: Other Films and Television Shows Cited in this CollectionBibliographyContributors